After the Sixers’ Game 1 loss, it was easy to point to the long layoff as the reason for the team’s poor play, their inability to shoot the driving factor in a disappointing performance to kick off the series.

After Game 2, after the Celtics ran up and down the floor on the Sixers’ sleepy transition defense, that narrative started to slip away. The defeat, the second one up in Boston, was much more difficult to stomach than the first.

After Saturday’s Game 3, in which the Sixers searched out every unforced error they could find in a disastrous 101-98 overtime defeat at the Wells Fargo Center, any thought of the Sixers being the better team is a difficult one to make.

They’re not ready.

That’s the only conclusion I can reach after watching J.J. Redick roll the ball to nobody in particular, giving Boston an easy transition score to take the lead in the waning seconds of regulation as Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid,...